LIMINAL

I had the privilege of being selected for and participating in this year's Art Not Apart festival in Canberra. My contribution explored protest sites and the rise of inequality and racism. It's not easy keeping cool when your passionate about a good cause. Even progressives in the US determined to rally recently in support of a more inclusive society resorted to physical violence when confronting neo-Nazis. Confrontation of evil by the power of love with non-violent protest, as Martin Luther King wrote, is the most potent weapon available to oppressed people in their struggle for freedom. But when you are invested in social reform and impacted by injustice, it ain't easy to keep cool, any time, any where. To read more, see headline image, go to: https://artnotapart.com/artist/2019/toni-hassan/

There was at least one bright spot on Capital Hill before parliamentarians flew out of Canberra last week. It was the passing of Australia’s first federal law to address modern slavery in the things we buy. The passage of the law was an exercise in genuine bipartisanship, with the most active Liberals being Western Australia’s Senator Linda Reynolds and Victorian member of parliament Chris Crewther, and the most active Labor members being Tasmania’s Senator Lisa Singh and Victoria’s Clare O’Neil. O'Neil and Reynolds, representing the major parties, collaborated primarily with Greens Senator Nick McKim, independents Tim Storer and Derryn Hinch, and members of the Centre Alliance. It wasn’t just the senate doing its job, but a strong and collaborative civil society too. We might be disgusted with the near-toxic levels of tribalism in the parliament and despair at its capacity to do good, but there is room for optimism. The Senate committee system generally works well. It wa...

So, one of the plotters who blew up the government of Malcolm Turnbull, Health Minister Greg Hunt, has ordered an inquiry into sleep. He reckons there’s a problem and a parliamentary committee is now looking into it. Sleep is a problem. It’s no small matter that four in every 10 Australians are not getting enough sleep on a regular basis. But has he looked in the mirror? Does he demand that his staff answer mobile phones all hours of the night and at the crack of dawn, or does he insist they get eight hours sleep per night? Does he answer radio and television calls for an interview before the sun is up? Or does he tell producers to remember that a tired minister is a less-functioning minister. He must know that the madness that engulfed the Coalition over the past few months, saw a lot of people lose a tonne of sleep. And for what? I happen to be writing a book about the smartphone age and its impact on families. It is clear that communication technologies are adversely a...

Within days of a government minister repaying obscene amounts billed for internet use we learnt this week that one in five Australians regularly struggles to afford food. The hunger relief organisation Foodbank categorised one in four of these people as having “very low food security”. It’s worst away from our cities, and when big bills arrive. Schools respond with volunteer-run breakfast clubs. There are about a dozen across Canberra and Queanbeyan, feeding more than 500 children. It's well established that disadvantage is typically experienced across many dimensions. Those dimensions cascade. There is a strong correlation between children going hungry, health complaints and poor education outcomes. Successive studies across many countries by global agency UNICEF show hungry children are also more likely to be bullied and will experience shame and exclusion because with little food at home, they feel less able to have friends over. An infant will typically be full of w...

Behind all the talk about the independence of the ABC lies a separate but gnawing concern that populism is increasingly trumping depth in the making of its programs. Michelle Guthrie was a late convert to quality reporting (staff still wince recalling her early advice to makers of Four Corners, that they should try doing some positive profiles of successful business leaders). But under her, and under budget pressure, senior management have been hacking away at serious programs in order to make way for topical and lighter fare. It has narrowed the range of topics focused on by those programs and limited their depth. Guthrie presided over a downsizing of the ABC’s flagship current affairs programs The World Today and PM, cutting both from one hour to half an hour. The "ideas network", Radio National, was thinned as management began earnestly shifting the network into a podcast-making machine that can one day be moved off the broadcast airwaves altogether. Management m...

Do we really need a royal commission to tell us what’s wrong with aged care? From what I am told, in Canberra we know the problems and they are not extensive. Pockets could be better of course, including some of the reputable facilities run by churches. And there is at least one common complaint: that too many staff don’t speak English well. It can be a barrier to developing good relationships with residents. The other challenge, wherever you live, is the need to keep an eye on the centre to make sure its service doesn’t worsen. If the centre loses a couple of key people or can't attract staff (which happens a lot) things can go off the rails quickly. Four out of every ten people in aged care are not visited for an entire year, according to the aged care minister Ken Wyatt. That’s shocking. Even where residents have no relatives or friends who can visit, the rest of us should be able to find a way to do it. Most of the complaints made to ABC’s Four Corners program came ...

Growing up in suburban Sydney, I broke bread with all kinds. The dismantling of the White Australia policy in the 1960s and 1970s had allowed my parents to bring me from South Africa, aspire to belong and buy a house on a quarter acre block. My father started a business. Schooled in Islam, he ensured we never ate pork. I went to a public school alongside Aboriginal, Slavic, Italian, Greek and Malay students, as well as Anglos. Embracing the Jesus story, I found mentors in a diverse and welcoming community in Anglican and Baptist churches while still connected to my Muslim family. Canberra is less diverse, but still very welcoming. Here in the national capital, Senator Fraser Anning made a splash when he called for an end to immigrants who do not reflect “the historic European Christian composition of Australian society”. He’s been roundly condemned. What Anning may not have heard loud and clear is that Jesus was not European. He’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise if in a Wes...